Meeting Miss Mystic (31 page)

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll tend to the fire. Zoë, you’re helping out with the tents? Don’t you want to go to the store or look around a bit? Can’t be fun for you to help Nils put up the tents. Did you say you were an artist? Why don’t you do some art or something?”

Zoë smiled at the white-haired man. He was good-looking for his age and in good shape. No wonder the older ladies were in such a tizzy over him! He looked weathered and strong like a cowboy who’d seen and done it all, his light blue eyes holding Zoë’s with warmth and kindness.

“No, sir,” she said, smiling at him. “I don’t mind helping a little.”

“Well, get to it then, Nils.” He shivered, looking toward the store with wide eyes. “I think I’ll go get lost in the woods and find some wood. Don’t tell ‘em where I went, now.”

Zoë pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key.

Nils, who’d started unpacking his father’s van as Zoë chatted with Mr. Lindstrom, handed her an armful of stakes and she followed behind him as he spread out a clear plastic tarp and then opened up a royal blue nylon bag and shook out a tent over the groundcover.

“So?” he asked, busy putting poles together, not looking at her. “You want to talk?”

She stood off to the side, awkwardly holding a couple dozen dirty plastic stakes in her arms.

“I’m sort of surprised. I didn’t—I mean, I wouldn’t have figured you for the sort who offers to let a woman spill her guts. No offense.” She bit her lip, hoping she hadn’t hurt his feelings.

“None taken. Stake.”

She handed him one and the hammer made a pleasing pinging noise as he pounded it into the ground.

“You don’t have to talk, but I know that sometimes you gals get things stuck in your heads and it’s just better for everyone if they just come on out already,” he said, then added softly, “I had a mother and a sister and…”

He was a little bit old-fashioned and she found it didn’t bother her at all.

“A Maggie,” she blurted out.

Nils looked up at her, one eyebrow cocked up. “Stake.”

She handed him one and he hit it into the ground again, only harder and louder.

“We’re talking about you, not me,” he finally answered, looking up at her.

“You and Maggie are together, right?” Paul had kept Zoë updated on Nils and Maggie’s on-again-off-again romance which currently was “on,” as far as she knew, though Nils didn’t look very happy when Zoë mentioned Maggie, which she found odd.

He sighed, shaking his head. “Stake. Let’s just worry about you.”

She watched him silently as he wove the poles into the slit on either side of the text and in a matter of minutes, a tight, taut, bright blue four-person tent had been erected.

She followed him to the next patch of waiting grass, watched as he took a bright orange nylon tent out of its bag, spreading it out on the ground over a clear plastic tarp like the other one.

She wondered how in the world to begin.

Well, Zoë. At the beginning.

“I met a man. On the internet.”

Nils didn’t look up or otherwise react. “Stake.”

She handed him one.

“About a month ago. And he’s…amazing. He’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. In my whole life. I didn’t mean to find him…really, he found me. Or his friend did. She answered an ad I forgot that I’d ever placed. She told me all about him and he sounded so…”

“Stake.”

“…well, wonderful that I started writing to him. But, the picture I had posted with the ad? It was how I looked two years ago. I was blonde and thinner and I didn’t have any tattoos. And my life doesn’t match the profile anymore either. At that time, I was a middle school teacher. I had a different life. In a lot of ways, I was a different person.”

She sighed, getting lost in her thoughts for a second, thinking about the framed picture sitting in Paul’s bedside table. How many nights had he fallen asleep looking at that old picture of her? How important was it to him that she look like the picture?

“Stake,” Nils said, drawing her back to their conversation.

She handed one over.

“He liked the picture so much…well, I didn’t have the heart to tell him how much I’d changed in the two years since that photo was taken. And I sort of liked being that girl again. That girl was so young and hopeful.”

“And you’re so old and washed up,” he muttered. “Stake.”

She shrugged as he took it out of her outstretched hand.

“I don’t feel young and hopeful.”

“Neither do I,” he said, grabbing another clear tarp from the back of the van and a bright yellow nylon bag.

“Should I keep—?”

“Yeah, go on.” He shook out the bright yellow material, lining it up over the clear groundcover.

“Anyway, I made a mistake. A big one. I lied about who I was. I lied about what I looked like. I just pretended that’s what I still looked like. Worse, I pretended that what’s my life still looked like.”

“Stake. What does your life
really
look like?” He looked up at her, his face void of judgment.

She tossed him a stake and he caught it in one hand, the other hand swinging the hammer by his side as he looked into her eyes.

“Messy.” She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I was in a bad accident. I hurt myself—my face and my leg. I hurt my nephew; he lost his legs. I quit my job and took a job as a web developer. I hide in a little office all day. I got dark brown contacts, cut my hair and dyed it black because that’s how I thought I should look. Dark. Bad. See this?” She turned her back to him and pointed to her left shoulder. “That’s the date of the accident. And this one?” She tapped on her right shoulder. “In honor of my nephew Brandon, my little lamb, who will never be the same.”

She turned to look at Nils. His blue eyes seared into hers for a moment before he threw the hammer on the ground and tugged at the corner of his t-shirt. He raised it, showing off a set of abs that should make any woman weep, but did little for Zoë but pique her curiosity. He pointed to a small tattoo on his left pec, over his heart. She stepped toward him and looked at it more closely.

Two small crosses sat over his heart, side by side, with the date 2001.

She looked up at his serious, troubled eyes as he lowered his shirt slowly.

“Stake,” he said quietly, deep sadness and profound sympathy etched into his features. She handed him one and he turned his back to her, picking up the hammer and whacking the stake into the ground with a merciless force.

“What does yours mean?” she whispered, knowing it was bad, knowing it was heartbreaking, wondering if it had anything to do with his on again/off again relationship with Maggie.

“So, here you are two years later. You meet a man from Montana over the internet.”

He wasn’t going to tell her anything. Okay.

“Well, he told me he was coming for Christmas and I came up with a plan. I would grow out my hair, dye it back to blonde, lose some weight, get my old job back, get clear contacts, finish my last facial surgery and by the time—”

“Paul got back east, you’d be Holly again, right?” He stared at her, eyebrows raised.

“Right,” she murmured. “Wait! You knew?”

“I knew when you filled out the forms in our office yesterday. Zoë Flannigan. Everyone who knows Paul knows the name Holly Flannigan because he won’t shut the hell up about you. I put two and two together and…”

He leaned down and hammered in the last stake, the bright yellow tent joining the neat line beside the royal blue and sunset orange.

“I’m a terrible person.”

“Nah. But, you’re making a mistake.”

Nils headed back to the van and returned with another tarp and a bright green nylon bag. Zoë counted the stakes in her arms. They were halfway done.

“What do you mean?” she asked, watching as the wind picked up the thick nylon for a moment. She placed her foot on a corner to keep it in place.

“You can’t go back. Not when something like that happens. Your accident. Oh, sure, you could color your hair and get your old job back. But, you’re a different person. You say you were pretending to be someone else all the while you were getting to know him, but that’s impossible. An accident like that? It changes you. Forever. You can’t go back. You are who you are.”

Tears pricked and burned her eyes as they welled.

“Then it’s over. There’s no point. He’s lost to me. He wants the girl in the picture.”

“Stake.”

She threw him one.

“Don’t kill me now,” he grumbled.

“Sorry,” she sobbed, letting the stakes fall to the ground, her shoulders shaking.

Nils stood up, but he didn’t approach her or touch her or otherwise move to comfort her.

“Hey now,” he said gently. “I think you’re looking at this all wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Paul fell in love with
you
. With whomever you are now. That’s who he talked to and e-mailed with. That’s who he got to know. You think you were pretending to be someone else, but it’s impossible. Who you are still shines through. And he’s in love with you. Not with a picture. Not with your job. Not with your blonde hair. Not with your blue eyes, which, by the way, you still have. It doesn’t matter what name you used. It doesn’t matter you have two little tattoos on your shoulders. The terrible thing that happened to you is part of who you are. You. The girl Paul loves is standing right here.”

Nils pointed a thick, tan finger at her, holding her watery eyes.

“And he’ll get good and mad at you because you lied to him. But the reason he can’t stay away from you now that you’re here? Because you’re the girl he loves. Packaging don’t matter. His heart knows yours.”

Tears coursed down Zoë’s face as she stared at Nils, and her heart, which had been so heavy—so terribly, unbearably heavy for weeks—felt something it hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Hope.

She launched herself toward him and he caught her in his arms, patting her back awkwardly. “There, there. You remind me of my
lillesøster
, Jenny. Trying so hard to be brave on the outside when you’re just a mess of crazy feelings on the inside.”

She leaned back and looked up at him and he dropped his arms, giving her a sour look. “You cried all over my shirt,” he complained.

A small giggle burst up from her throat and she snuffled with an unladylike snort. She’d cried all over two or three of Paul’s shirts and he’d never said a word.
Do you hear me complaining?
It made her smile, remembering.

“Go back and tell him the truth. Let him get mad and yell and stomp around a little. Then he’ll come to his senses. He’ll know it’s you he loved all the while. Paul’s sturdy like that.” He gave her a grim smile then turned back to his work. “I’m just about done. Why don’t you go explore the campground a little?”

“I’ll be back for franks and beans,” she said, giving him a small smile as she brushed her hands on her jeans, turning toward the camp store where she saw several of the ladies making their return to camp.

“Zoë!” he called to her.

She turned and faced him, cocking her head to the side.

“You can’t go back to the person you were before, but just remember he never met her. You’re the only girl he knows. You’re the girl he loves. You.”

Then he leaned back down, unfurling a red tent, and she smiled at his back through the tears that brightened her eyes.

***

Paul woke up on Wednesday morning with a scorching hangover after spending most of Tuesday night drinking the other bottle of Coonawarra cab in addition to the bottle from Napa Valley that she’d rejected. After drinking both bottles on an empty stomach while re-reading every e-mail and text he’d ever received from Holly, he’d finally thrown his cell phone into the porch wall and stumbled up to his bedroom. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten about the glass from the shattered frame on his bedroom floor and proceeded to get three shards in the pad of his foot, which had bled all over his sheets. He spent the first thirty minutes of his day picking them out and cleaning the wounds, dumping bottle after bottle of water down his throat, chased by several Advil. He still felt like total and utter crap. His head hurt. And his foot. And his heart.

And yet, what he had discovered—with increasingly confused feelings last night—was that the e-mails and texts written by “Holly” could have just as easily been written by “Zoë.” It’s true that she had lied about her job, the status of her family relationships and the way she looked. But her words and feelings? As he re-read them, he realized that they sounded like the Zoë he’d just spent four days with.

He’d finally thrown his phone across the porch not because of something she’d written to him, but because of a theme that was practically redundant in every e-mail and text he had written to her; repeatedly he talked about how she looked—her blonde hair and blue eyes, her pretty smile. How the hell had she been able to stand it? All of his gushing about a pretty girl who didn’t exist. Who hadn’t existed in years.

Had he—initially, at least—just fallen in love with a picture? He had to face the reality that he probably had. Because he’d wanted Holly partially for how she looked in her picture. Sunny, pretty and bright. A princess. A buttercup. And he’d wanted her perfect body and shiny smile in his life.

In spite of his feelings for Holly, however, Zoë had knocked the wind out of him pretty much from the first moment he’d met her. He couldn’t deny his feelings for Zoë, or how much he wanted her—dark, complex, brooding, sad Zoë, with her high emotions and broken past and broken body that set his on fire. He’d wanted her—oh hell, he
still
wanted her—with a fury, a fierce longing such that he had never, ever known. Not for Alice. Not for Gia. Not for Jenny. And not for Holly.

Still, in a quiet, strange way, he missed Holly. He missed her, even though he was two years too late to meet her. He missed the
idea
of her.

And yes, he missed Zoë, who’d already spent one night in Nils Lindstrom’s blond, buff, blue-eyed company.

But more than anything, Paul felt unlucky in love again, because he didn’t know what to do next.

The idea of Holly was gone, but Holly’s words and thoughts and feelings were now owned by Zoë’s face. And Zoë, for whom he’d felt such an instant and binding connection, had lied to him, deceived him, let him fall in love with her, even as he struggled over his guilt for betraying Holly. His longing for her and anger toward her were locked in a brutal battle, and overshadowing everything was the notion that no matter how he felt about Zoë, he simply didn’t know if he could ever trust her again. And still. In spite of his hurt pride and betrayed trust, there was one thing he knew absolutely, as sure as his heart beat in his chest: the thought of losing her completely was so painful, so leveling, so discouraging and unacceptable, he’d taken it out of the equation. There had to be a way for him and Zoë to be together. He would just have to figure it out.